IX Clifford and Phoebe
TRULY was there something high, generous, and noble in the nativecomposition of our poor old Hepzibah! Or else,--and it was quite asprobably the case,--she had been enriched by poverty, developed bysorrow, elevated by the strong and solitary affection of her life, andthus endowed with heroism, which never could have characterized her inwhat are called happier circumstances. Through dreary years Hepzibahhad looked forward--for the most part despairingly, never with anyconfidence of hope, but always with the feeling that it was herbrightest possibility--to the very position in which she now foundherself. In her own behalf, she had asked nothing of Providence butthe opportunity of devoting herself to this brother, whom she had soloved,--so admired for what he was, or might have been,--and to whomshe had kept her faith, alone of all the world, wholly, unfalteringly,at every instant, and throughout life. And here, in his late decline,the lost one had come back out of his long and strange misfortune, andwas thrown on her sympathy, as it seemed, not merely for the bread ofhis physical existence, but for everything that should keep him morallyalive. She had responded to the call. She had come forward,--ourpoor, gaunt Hepzibah, in her rusty silks, with her rigid joints, andthe sad perversity of her scowl,--ready to do her utmost; and withaffection enough, if that were all, to do a hundred times as much!There could be few more tearful sights,--and Heaven forgive us if asmile insist on mingling with our conception of it!--few sights withtruer pathos in them, than Hepzibah presented on that first afternoon.
How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clifford up in her great, warmlove, and make it all the world to him, so that he should retain notorturing sense of the coldness and dreariness without! Her littleefforts to amuse him! How pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were!
Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, she unlocked abookcase, and took down several books that had been excellent readingin their day. There was a volume of Pope, with the Rape of the Lock init, and another of the Tatler, and an odd one of Dryden's Miscellanies,all with tarnished gilding on their covers, and thoughts of tarnishedbrilliancy inside. They had no success with Clifford. These, and allsuch writers of society, whose new works glow like the rich texture ofa just-woven carpet, must be content to relinquish their charm, forevery reader, after an age or two, and could hardly be supposed toretain any portion of it for a mind that had utterly lost its estimateof modes and manners. Hepzibah then took up Rasselas, and began toread of the Happy Valley, with a vague idea that some secret of acontented life had there been elaborated, which might at least serveClifford and herself for this one day. But the Happy Valley had acloud over it. Hepzibah troubled her auditor, moreover, by innumerablesins of emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without any reference tothe meaning; nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of the senseof what she read, but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, withoutharvesting its profit. His sister's voice, too, naturally harsh, had,in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak,which, when it once gets into the human throat, is as ineradicable assin. In both sexes, occasionally, this lifelong croak, accompanyingeach word of joy or sorrow, is one of the symptoms of a settledmelancholy; and wherever it occurs, the whole history of misfortune isconveyed in its slightest accent. The effect is as if the voice hadbeen dyed black; or,--if we must use a more moderate simile,--thismiserable croak, running through all the variations of the voice, islike a black silken thread, on which the crystal beads of speech arestrung, and whence they take their hue. Such voices have put onmourning for dead hopes; and they ought to die and be buried along withthem!
Discerning that Clifford was not gladdened by her efforts, Hepzibahsearched about the house for the means of more exhilarating pastime.At one time, her eyes chanced to rest on Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord.It was a moment of great peril; for,--despite the traditionary awe thathad gathered over this instrument of music, and the dirges whichspiritual fingers were said to play on it,--the devoted sister hadsolemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford's benefit, andaccompanying the performance with her voice. Poor Clifford! PoorHepzibah! Poor harpsichord! All three would have been miserabletogether. By some good agency,--possibly, by the unrecognizedinterposition of the long-buried Alice herself,--the threateningcalamity was averted.
But the worst of all--the hardest stroke of fate for Hepzibah toendure, and perhaps for Clifford, too was his invincible distaste forher appearance. Her features, never the most agreeable, and now harshwith age and grief, and resentment against the world for his sake; herdress, and especially her turban; the queer and quaint manners, whichhad unconsciously grown upon her in solitude,--such being the poorgentlewoman's outward characteristics, it is no great marvel, althoughthe mournfullest of pities, that the instinctive lover of the Beautifulwas fain to turn away his eyes. There was no help for it. It would bethe latest impulse to die within him. In his last extremity, theexpiring breath stealing faintly through Clifford's lips, he woulddoubtless press Hepzibah's hand, in fervent recognition of all herlavished love, and close his eyes,--but not so much to die, as to beconstrained to look no longer on her face! Poor Hepzibah! She tookcounsel with herself what might be done, and thought of putting ribbonson her turban; but, by the instant rush of several guardian angels, waswithheld from an experiment that could hardly have proved less thanfatal to the beloved object of her anxiety.
To be brief, besides Hepzibah's disadvantages of person, there was anuncouthness pervading all her deeds; a clumsy something, that could butill adapt itself for use, and not at all for ornament. She was a griefto Clifford, and she knew it. In this extremity, the antiquated virginturned to Phoebe. No grovelling jealousy was in her heart. Had itpleased Heaven to crown the heroic fidelity of her life by making herpersonally the medium of Clifford's happiness, it would have rewardedher for all the past, by a joy with no bright tints, indeed, but deepand true, and worth a thousand gayer ecstasies. This could not be.She therefore turned to Phoebe, and resigned the task into the younggirl's hands. The latter took it up cheerfully, as she did everything,but with no sense of a mission to perform, and succeeding all thebetter for that same simplicity.
By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Phoebe soon grew tobe absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, ofher two forlorn companions. The grime and sordidness of the House ofthe Seven Gables seemed to have vanished since her appearance there;the gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was stayed among the old timbers ofits skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, fromthe antique ceilings, upon the floors and furniture of the roomsbelow,--or, at any rate, there was a little housewife, as light-footedas the breeze that sweeps a garden walk, gliding hither and thither tobrush it all away. The shadows of gloomy events that haunted the elselonely and desolate apartments; the heavy, breathless scent which deathhad left in more than one of the bedchambers, ever since his visits oflong ago,--these were less powerful than the purifying influencescattered throughout the atmosphere of the household by the presence ofone youthful, fresh, and thoroughly wholesome heart. There was nomorbidness in Phoebe; if there had been, the old Pyncheon House was thevery locality to ripen it into incurable disease. But now her spiritresembled, in its potency, a minute quantity of ottar of rose in one ofHepzibah's huge, iron-bound trunks, diffusing its fragrance through thevarious articles of linen and wrought-lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings,folded dresses, gloves, and whatever else was treasured there. Asevery article in the great trunk was the sweeter for the rose-scent, sodid all the thoughts and emotions of Hepzibah and Clifford, sombre asthey might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of happiness from Phoebe'sintermixture with them. Her activity of body, intellect, and heartimpelled her continually to perform the ordinary little toils thatoffered themselves around her, and to think the thought proper for themoment, and to sympathize,--now with the twittering gayety of therobins in the pear-tree, and now to such a depth as she could withHepzibah's dark anxiety, or the vagu
e moan of her brother. This facileadaptation was at once the symptom of perfect health and its bestpreservative.
A nature like Phoebe's has invariably its due influence, but is seldomregarded with due honor. Its spiritual force, however, may bepartially estimated by the fact of her having found a place forherself, amid circumstances so stern as those which surrounded themistress of the house; and also by the effect which she produced on acharacter of so much more mass than her own. For the gaunt, bonyframe and limbs of Hepzibah, as compared with the tiny lightsomeness ofPhoebe's figure, were perhaps in some fit proportion with the moralweight and substance, respectively, of the woman and the girl.
To the guest,--to Hepzibah's brother,--or Cousin Clifford, as Phoebenow began to call him,--she was especially necessary. Not that he couldever be said to converse with her, or often manifest, in any other verydefinite mode, his sense of a charm in her society. But if she were along while absent he became pettish and nervously restless, pacing theroom to and fro with the uncertainty that characterized all hismovements; or else would sit broodingly in his great chair, resting hishead on his hands, and evincing life only by an electric sparkle ofill-humor, whenever Hepzibah endeavored to arouse him. Phoebe'spresence, and the contiguity of her fresh life to his blighted one, wasusually all that he required. Indeed, such was the native gush and playof her spirit, that she was seldom perfectly quiet and undemonstrative,any more than a fountain ever ceases to dimple and warble with itsflow. She possessed the gift of song, and that, too, so naturally, thatyou would as little think of inquiring whence she had caught it, orwhat master had taught her, as of asking the same questions about abird, in whose small strain of music we recognize the voice of theCreator as distinctly as in the loudest accents of his thunder. So longas Phoebe sang, she might stray at her own will about the house.Clifford was content, whether the sweet, airy homeliness of her tonescame down from the upper chambers, or along the passageway from theshop, or was sprinkled through the foliage of the pear-tree, inwardfrom the garden, with the twinkling sunbeams. He would sit quietly,with a gentle pleasure gleaming over his face, brighter now, and now alittle dimmer, as the song happened to float near him, or was moreremotely heard. It pleased him best, however, when she sat on a lowfootstool at his knee.
It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament, that Phoebeoftener chose a strain of pathos than of gayety. But the young andhappy are not ill pleased to temper their life with a transparentshadow. The deepest pathos of Phoebe's voice and song, moreover, camesifted through the golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was somehowso interfused with the quality thence acquired, that one's heart feltall the lighter for having wept at it. Broad mirth, in the sacredpresence of dark misfortune, would have jarred harshly and irreverentlywith the solemn symphony that rolled its undertone through Hepzibah'sand her brother's life. Therefore, it was well that Phoebe so oftenchose sad themes, and not amiss that they ceased to be so sad while shewas singing them.
Becoming habituated to her companionship, Clifford readily showed howcapable of imbibing pleasant tints and gleams of cheerful light fromall quarters his nature must originally have been. He grew youthfulwhile she sat by him. A beauty,--not precisely real, even in itsutmost manifestation, and which a painter would have watched long toseize and fix upon his canvas, and, after all, in vain,--beauty,nevertheless, that was not a mere dream, would sometimes play upon andilluminate his face. It did more than to illuminate; it transfiguredhim with an expression that could only be interpreted as the glow of anexquisite and happy spirit. That gray hair, and those furrows,--withtheir record of infinite sorrow so deeply written across his brow, andso compressed, as with a futile effort to crowd in all the tale, thatthe whole inscription was made illegible,--these, for the moment,vanished. An eye at once tender and acute might have beheld in the mansome shadow of what he was meant to be. Anon, as age came stealing,like a sad twilight, back over his figure, you would have felt temptedto hold an argument with Destiny, and affirm, that either this beingshould not have been made mortal, or mortal existence should have beentempered to his qualities. There seemed no necessity for his havingdrawn breath at all; the world never wanted him; but, as he hadbreathed, it ought always to have been the balmiest of summer air. Thesame perplexity will invariably haunt us with regard to natures thattend to feed exclusively upon the Beautiful, let their earthly fate beas lenient as it may.
Phoebe, it is probable, had but a very imperfect comprehension of thecharacter over which she had thrown so beneficent a spell. Nor was itnecessary. The fire upon the hearth can gladden a whole semicircle offaces round about it, but need not know the individuality of one amongthem all. Indeed, there was something too fine and delicate inClifford's traits to be perfectly appreciated by one whose sphere layso much in the Actual as Phoebe's did. For Clifford, however, thereality, and simplicity, and thorough homeliness of the girl's naturewere as powerful a charm as any that she possessed. Beauty, it istrue, and beauty almost perfect in its own style, was indispensable.Had Phoebe been coarse in feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh voice,and uncouthly mannered, she might have been rich with all good gifts,beneath this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as she wore theguise of woman, she would have shocked Clifford, and depressed him byher lack of beauty. But nothing more beautiful--nothing prettier, atleast--was ever made than Phoebe. And, therefore, to this man,--whosewhole poor and impalpable enjoyment of existence heretofore, and untilboth his heart and fancy died within him, had been a dream,--whoseimages of women had more and more lost their warmth and substance, andbeen frozen, like the pictures of secluded artists, into the chillestideality,--to him, this little figure of the cheeriest household lifewas just what he required to bring him back into the breathing world.Persons who have wandered, or been expelled, out of the common track ofthings, even were it for a better system, desire nothing so much as tobe led back. They shiver in their loneliness, be it on a mountain-topor in a dungeon. Now, Phoebe's presence made a home about her,--thatvery sphere which the outcast, the prisoner, the potentate,--the wretchbeneath mankind, the wretch aside from it, or the wretch aboveit,--instinctively pines after,--a home! She was real! Holding herhand, you felt something; a tender something; a substance, and a warmone: and so long as you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, youmight be certain that your place was good in the whole sympatheticchain of human nature. The world was no longer a delusion.
By looking a little further in this direction, we might suggest anexplanation of an often-suggested mystery. Why are poets so apt tochoose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but forqualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsmanas well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because,probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no humanintercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.
There was something very beautiful in the relation that grew up betweenthis pair, so closely and constantly linked together, yet with such awaste of gloomy and mysterious years from his birthday to hers. OnClifford's part it was the feeling of a man naturally endowed with theliveliest sensibility to feminine influence, but who had never quaffedthe cup of passionate love, and knew that it was now too late. He knewit, with the instinctive delicacy that had survived his intellectualdecay. Thus, his sentiment for Phoebe, without being paternal, was notless chaste than if she had been his daughter. He was a man, it istrue, and recognized her as a woman. She was his only representativeof womankind. He took unfailing note of every charm that appertainedto her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginaldevelopment of her bosom. All her little womanly ways, budding out ofher like blossoms on a young fruit-tree, had their effect on him, andsometimes caused his very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills ofpleasure. At such moments,--for the effect was seldom more thanmomentary,--the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious life, justas a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the musician's fingerssweep across it. But, after all, it seemed rather a
perception, or asympathy, than a sentiment belonging to himself as an individual. Heread Phoebe as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her asif she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of hisbleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him,to warble through the house. She was not an actual fact for him, butthe interpretation of all that he lacked on earth brought warmly hometo his conception; so that this mere symbol, or life-like picture, hadalmost the comfort of reality.
But we strive in vain to put the idea into words. No adequateexpression of the beauty and profound pathos with which it impresses usis attainable. This being, made only for happiness, and heretofore somiserably failing to be happy,--his tendencies so hideously thwarted,that, some unknown time ago, the delicate springs of his character,never morally or intellectually strong, had given way, and he was nowimbecile,--this poor, forlorn voyager from the Islands of the Blest, ina frail bark, on a tempestuous sea, had been flung, by the lastmountain-wave of his shipwreck, into a quiet harbor. There, as he laymore than half lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an earthlyrose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had summoned upreminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing beauty amidwhich he should have had his home. With his native susceptibility ofhappy influences, he inhales the slight, ethereal rapture into hissoul, and expires!
And how did Phoebe regard Clifford? The girl's was not one of thosenatures which are most attracted by what is strange and exceptional inhuman character. The path which would best have suited her was thewell-worn track of ordinary life; the companions in whom she would mosthave delighted were such as one encounters at every turn. The mysterywhich enveloped Clifford, so far as it affected her at all, was anannoyance, rather than the piquant charm which many women might havefound in it. Still, her native kindliness was brought strongly intoplay, not by what was darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so much,even, by the finer graces of his character, as by the simple appeal ofa heart so forlorn as his to one so full of genuine sympathy as hers.She gave him an affectionate regard, because he needed so much love,and seemed to have received so little. With a ready tact, the resultof ever-active and wholesome sensibility, she discerned what was goodfor him, and did it. Whatever was morbid in his mind and experienceshe ignored; and thereby kept their intercourse healthy, by theincautious, but, as it were, heaven-directed freedom of her wholeconduct. The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered moredarkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease,mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them;they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, ininfinite repetition. But Phoebe afforded her poor patient a supply ofpurer air. She impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower scent,--forwildness was no trait of hers,--but with the perfume of garden-roses,pinks, and other blossoms of much sweetness, which nature and man haveconsented together in making grow from summer to summer, and fromcentury to century. Such a flower was Phoebe in her relation withClifford, and such the delight that he inhaled from her.
Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a little, inconsequence of the heavy atmosphere about her. She grew morethoughtful than heretofore. Looking aside at Clifford's face, andseeing the dim, unsatisfactory elegance and the intellect almostquenched, she would try to inquire what had been his life. Was healways thus? Had this veil been over him from his birth?--this veil,under which far more of his spirit was hidden than revealed, andthrough which he so imperfectly discerned the actual world,--or was itsgray texture woven of some dark calamity? Phoebe loved no riddles, andwould have been glad to escape the perplexity of this one.Nevertheless, there was so far a good result of her meditations onClifford's character, that, when her involuntary conjectures, togetherwith the tendency of every strange circumstance to tell its own story,had gradually taught her the fact, it had no terrible effect upon her.Let the world have done him what vast wrong it might, she knew CousinClifford too well--or fancied so--ever to shudder at the touch of histhin, delicate fingers.
Within a few days after the appearance of this remarkable inmate, theroutine of life had established itself with a good deal of uniformityin the old house of our narrative. In the morning, very shortly afterbreakfast, it was Clifford's custom to fall asleep in his chair; nor,unless accidentally disturbed, would he emerge from a dense cloud ofslumber or the thinner mists that flitted to and fro, until welltowards noonday. These hours of drowsihead were the season of the oldgentlewoman's attendance on her brother, while Phoebe took charge ofthe shop; an arrangement which the public speedily understood, andevinced their decided preference of the younger shopwoman by themultiplicity of their calls during her administration of affairs.Dinner over, Hepzibah took her knitting-work,--a long stocking of grayyarn, for her brother's winter wear,--and with a sigh, and a scowl ofaffectionate farewell to Clifford, and a gesture enjoining watchfulnesson Phoebe, went to take her seat behind the counter. It was now theyoung girl's turn to be the nurse,--the guardian, the playmate,--orwhatever is the fitter phrase,--of the gray-haired man.
The House of the Seven Gables Page 11